6 The process of starting a computer and loading the operating system is referred to as ***the bootstrap process***, or simply ***booting***. DragonFly's boot process provides a great deal of flexibility in customizing what happens when you start the system, allowing you to select from different operating systems installed on the same computer, or even different versions of the same operating system or installed kernel.

8 This chapter details the configuration options you can set and how to customize the DragonFly boot process. This includes everything that happens until the DragonFly kernel has started, probed for devices, and started [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#init&section8). If you are not quite sure when this happens, it occurs when the text color changes from bright white to grey.

22 Turning on a computer and starting the operating system poses an interesting dilemma. By definition, the computer does not know how to do anything until the operating system is started. This includes running programs from the disk. So if the computer can not run a program from the disk without the operating system, and the operating system programs are on the disk, how is the operating system started?

24 This problem parallels one in the book ***The Adventures of Baron Munchausen***. A character had fallen part way down a manhole, and pulled himself out by grabbing his bootstraps, and lifting. In the early days of computing the term ***bootstrap*** was applied to the mechanism used to load the operating system, which has become shortened to ***booting***.

26 On x86 hardware the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible for loading the operating system. To do this, the BIOS looks on the hard disk for the Master Boot Record (MBR), which must be located on a specific place on the disk. The BIOS has enough knowledge to load and run the MBR, and assumes that the MBR can then carry out the rest of the tasks involved in loading the operating system possibly with the help of the BIOS.

28 The code within the MBR is usually referred to as a ***boot manager***, especially when it interacts with the user. In this case the boot manager usually has more code in the first ***track*** of the disk or within some OS's file system. (A boot manager is sometimes also called a ***boot loader***, but FreeBSD uses that term for a later stage of booting.) Popular boot managers include **boot0** (a.k.a. **Boot Easy** , the standard DragonFly boot manager), **Grub** , **GAG** , and **LILO** . (Only **boot0** fits within the MBR.)

30 If you have only one operating system installed on your disks then a standard PC MBR will suffice. This MBR searches for the first bootable (a.k.a. active) slice on the disk, and then runs the code on that slice to load the remainder of the operating system. The MBR installed by [fdisk(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=fdisk&section=8), by default, is such an MBR. It is based on `/boot/mbr`.

32 If you have installed multiple operating systems on your disks then you can install a different boot manager, one that can display a list of different operating systems, and allows you to choose the one to boot from. Two of these are discussed in the next subsection.

34 The remainder of the DragonFly bootstrap system is divided into three stages. The first stage is run by the MBR, which knows just enough to get the computer into a specific state and run the second stage. The second stage can do a little bit more, before running the third stage. The third stage finishes the task of loading the operating system. The work is split into these three stages because the PC standards put limits on the size of the programs that can be run at stages one and two. Chaining the tasks together allows DragonFly to provide a more flexible loader.

36 The kernel is then started and it begins to probe for devices and initialize them for use. Once the kernel boot process is finished, the kernel passes control to the user process [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8), which then makes sure the disks are in a usable state. [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8) then starts the user-level resource configuration which mounts file systems, sets up network cards to communicate on the network, and generally starts all the processes that usually are run on a DragonFly system at startup.

44 The code in the MBR or boot manager is sometimes referred to as ***stage zero*** of the boot process. This subsection discusses two of the boot managers previously mentioned: **boot0** and **LILO** .

46 **The** boot0 ** Boot Manager:** The MBR installed by FreeBSD's installer or [boot0cfg(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=boot0cfg&section=8), by default, is based on `/boot/boot0`. (The **boot0** program is very simple, since the program in the MBR can only be 446 bytes long because of the slice table and `0x55AA` identifier at the end of the MBR.) If you have installed **boot0** and multiple operating systems on your hard disks, then you will see a display similar to this one at boot time:

66 Other operating systems, in particular Windows®, have been known to overwrite an existing MBR with their own. If this happens to you, or you want to replace your existing MBR with the DragonFly MBR then use the following command:

72 where `***device***` is the device that you boot from, such as `ad0` for the first IDE disk, `ad2` for the first IDE disk on a second IDE controller, `da0` for the first SCSI disk, and so on. Or, if you want a custom configuration of the MBR, use [boot0cfg(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=boot0cfg&section=8).

86 In the above, specify DragonFly's primary partition and drive using Linux specifiers, replacing `***X***` with the Linux drive letter and `***Y***` with the Linux primary partition number. If you are using a SCSI drive, you will need to change `***/dev/hd***` to read something similar to `***/dev/sd***`. The `loader=/boot/chain.b` line can be omitted if you have both operating systems on the same drive. Now run `/sbin/lilo -v` to commit your new changes to the system; this should be verified by checking its screen messages.

90 Conceptually the first and second stages are part of the same program, on the same area of the disk. Because of space constraints they have been split into two, but you would always install them together. They are copied from the combined file `/boot/boot` by the installer or **disklabel** (see below).

92 They are located outside file systems, in the first track of the boot slice, starting with the first sector. This is where [ boot0](boot-blocks.html#BOOT-BOOT0), or any other boot manager, expects to find a program to run which will continue the boot process. The number of sectors used is easily determined from the size of `/boot/boot`.

94 They are found on the boot sector of the boot slice, which is where [ boot0](boot-blocks.html#BOOT-BOOT0), or any other program on the MBR expects to find the program to run to continue the boot process. The files in the `/boot` directory are copies of the real files, which are stored outside of the DragonFly file system.

100 Since the [ loader](boot-blocks.html#BOOT-LOADER) is much more sophisticated, and provides a nice easy-to-use boot configuration, `boot2` usually runs it, but previously it was tasked to run the kernel directly.

128 During initialization, the loader will probe for a console and for disks, and figure out what disk it is booting from. It will set variables accordingly, and an interpreter is started where user commands can be passed from a script or interactively.

130 The loader will then read `/boot/loader.rc`, which by default reads in `/boot/defaults/loader.conf` which sets reasonable defaults for variables and reads `/boot/loader.conf` for local changes to those variables. `loader.rc` then acts on these variables, loading whichever modules and kernel are selected.

132 Finally, by default, the loader issues a 10 second wait for key presses, and boots the kernel if it is not interrupted. If interrupted, the user is presented with a prompt which understands the easy-to-use command set, where the user may adjust variables, unload all modules, load modules, and then finally boot or reboot.

142 *boot-conf: Goes through the same automatic configuration of modules based on variables as what happens at boot. This only makes sense if you use `unload` first, and change some variables, most commonly `kernel`.

186 You can use `kernel.GENERIC` to refer to the generic kernel that comes on the install disk, or `kernel.old` to refer to your previously installed kernel (when you have upgraded or configured your own kernel, for example).

212 Once the kernel is loaded by either [ loader](boot-blocks.html#BOOT-LOADER) (as usual) or [ boot2](boot-blocks.html#BOOT-BOOT1) (bypassing the loader), it examines its boot flags, if any, and adjusts its behavior as necessary.

218 `-a`:: during kernel initialization, ask for the device to mount as the root file system.`-C`:: boot from CDROM.`-c`:: run UserConfig, the boot-time kernel configurator`-s`:: boot into single-user mode`-v`:: be more verbose during kernel startup

224 Once the kernel has finished booting, it passes control to the user process [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8), which is located at `/sbin/init`, or the program path specified in the `init_path` variable in `loader`.

228 The automatic reboot sequence makes sure that the file systems available on the system are consistent. If they are not, and [fsck(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=fsck&section=8) cannot fix the inconsistencies, [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8) drops the system into [single-user mode](boot-init.html#BOOT-SINGLEUSER) for the system administrator to take care of the problems directly.

234 It can also be reached by calling [shutdown(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=shutdown&section=8) without the reboot (`-r`) or halt (`-h`) options, from [multi-user mode](boot-init.html#BOOT-MULTIUSER).

252 **Note:** An `insecure` console means that you consider your physical security to the console to be insecure, and want to make sure only someone who knows the `root` password may use single-user mode, and it does not mean that you want to run your console insecurely. Thus, if you want security, choose `insecure`, not `secure`.

256 If [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8) finds your file systems to be in order, or once the user has finished in [single-user mode](boot-init.html#BOOT-SINGLEUSER), the system enters multi-user mode, in which it starts the resource configuration of the system.

260 The resource configuration system reads in configuration defaults from `/etc/defaults/rc.conf`, and system-specific details from `/etc/rc.conf`, and then proceeds to mount the system file systems mentioned in `/etc/fstab`, start up networking services, start up miscellaneous system daemons, and finally runs the startup scripts of locally installed packages.

266 Upon controlled shutdown, via [shutdown(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=shutdown&section=8), [init(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=init&section=8) will attempt to run the script `/etc/rc.shutdown`, and then proceed to send all processes the `TERM` signal, and subsequently the `KILL` signal to any that do not terminate timely.

268 To power down a DragonFly machine on architectures and systems that support power management, simply use the command `shutdown -p now` to turn the power off immediately. To just reboot a DragonFly system, just use `shutdown -r now`. You need to be `root` or a member of `operator` group to run [shutdown(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=shutdown&section=8). The [halt(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=halt&section=8) and [reboot(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=reboot&section=8) commands can also be used, please refer to their manual pages and to [shutdown(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=shutdown&section=8)'s one for more information.

270 **Note:** Power management requires [acpi(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=acpi&section=4) support in the kernel or loaded as a module, or [apm(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=apm&section=4) support.